Some Good News About Troy Davis

Occasional readers of this blog may already know the story of Troy Davis, serving time on death row in Georgia, and of my personal interest in his cause. I found the recent directive by the Supreme Court that a Georgia court reconsider his case to be not only hopeful but reaffirming of my own sense of the situation. The justices were not, of course, unanimous in their decision. It may be worth highlighting opposing points of view.

Here's Justice Stevens on the matter:“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.”

But then here is Justice Scalia: "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

I'm sure Justice Scalia and I don't match up very well on our ideas of jurisprudence in general, and I'm also sure he knows a lot more about matters of law than I do. Nevertheless, it was odd reading his statement just as I was in the midst of reading a novel of suspense by Tom Rob Smith called Child 44, which is set in the Stalinist era of Russia. True, it's 'just a novel', but I think Smith probably pretty well understands the mindset of those who are willing to sacrifice the innocent for some greater good. There are a great many people in Russia who "failed thrive" under such a mentality.

If Troy Davis is "actually" innocent, then he is actually innocent. And he should not only be "actually" set free, he should actually be set free.

Good luck to you, Troy, in presenting your case. For anyone who would like to be further involved, please go here.

What The Guardian Knows that The New York Times Doesn't.

Sorry, American newspapers. You had your chance, but you got scooped. You could have been the first to give a rave review to Fifty Grand, the wonderful stand alone novel by Adrian McKinty. And it had everything a good American paper might want: celebrities, a thoughtful critique of Cuba, an American setting, even the illegal immigrant issue. Frankly, it was made for you.

So where did I read the first major newspaper review? Here.Some sort of English rag. You might have heard of it. It's called The Guardian.

Yeah, I've got a bit of an ax to grind. I'm a bookseller, and I've been trying to sell this book all summer. And actually, I have sold a few. Not as many as I would have liked, and definitely not as many as I could have or would have if American newspapers, despite their financial woes, had gotten behind this one. I know everyone wants to read Michael Connelly and John Grisham and the tried and true, but isn't anyone looking to the future? Isn't anyone thinking, maybe we ought to be cultivating some other excellent writers?

As our Guardian reviewer mentions, McKinty has already written a major crime series focused on a very complex character, Michael Forsythe. Unbelievably, the first novel in this series, Dead I Well May Be, is out of print in the U.S. (Don't let that stop you, though--once again, the Brits have picked up our slack, and you can get a very nice paperback edition from Serpent's Tail.)

I have to say that when a writer this good doesn't get the attention he merits, it really makes me wonder about the state of American publishing. I know that editors and even editorial assistants still can spot great writing, so where is the bottleneck, exactly? Is everyone in publishing so attuned to what the televised media says that they don't pay any attention anymore to people who actually read?

Well, I'm puzzled, and am likely to remain so. But luckily, our friends across the pond are not likely to remain in the dark about this talent. We can rely on Serpent's Tail to keep some wonderful writing in print.

Know Privacy

I picked this up courtesy of local muckraker Bruce Bratton, and thought I would disseminate it for whatever that effort's worth. It's a site called Know Privacy, which monitors web privacy, information sharing and data collection. It's a little weird to post this on Google, which is apparently one of the main players in this game. I think what's odd is that we all know so much of this already. But instead of deciding to abandon the web, credit cards and all the conveniences that make us so very easy to monitor, we shrug it off as one of the 'costs of doing business'. I'm not so happy with all this data being stored somewhere, quite frankly. But I'm even less comfortable with my own passive acceptance of it.

Carte Noire

As all my regular readers know...okay, as I alone know, I am a bit lazy when it comes to the blog posts and will look for almost any excuse to avoid doing any extra work. So I am quite happy to offer random vistors a clue about a great reading series sponsored by Carte Noire. Dominic West of The Wire fame reading a shall we say polemical scene between Lizzie Bennett and posh Mr. Darcy? Do I have to say more than that? Oh, you poor, benighted sots. Just click the damn link.

An essay by Georgine Balassone (But she doesn't like the picture, so ignore it.)

Sometimes I think too hard about something that should have been obvious all along. Here I was, realizing that I hadn't posted here for quite some time, and wondering what little essay or story or whatever I could mention here, when I realized the answer had been staring me right in the face.

My good friend, co-worker and larger than life personality in her own right, Georgine Balassone, has recently published an essay about the forces that made her what she is today. Or, getting right to the heart of the matter, maybe we should just say, The Force.

A little shy to let the world know of this, her first web publication, she first swore me to secrecy, but has since freed me from the vow of silence.

Here, forthwith, What I Learned From My Mother, by Georgine Balassone.

Did I mention she was funny?

I Am Troy Davis

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers.--Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture, 1986

I must admit that, initially, I failed to understand the reasoning behind the Amnesty International T-Shirt that bears the words that head this post until I read this quote from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech by Elie Wiesel the other day. I had previously thought it presumptuous to express an identity between myself and a man who has spent decades in prison, under the shadow of death, most probably for a crime he did not commit.I am not Troy Davis, I thought. I have never had to live through what he has and it is naive to think I could simply 'empathize' my way into his situation.

All true, of course. But what the shirt is really saying, at least if I understand Wiesel correctly, is that in expressing solidarity with another human being, we are showing ourselves willing to share an identity with them, and even to stand in for that human being in situations where he or she can not themselves stand.

I have posted here about Troy Davis's case before. It is not my general intent to make this blog a soapbox for issues of the day. But the plight of this one particular human being moves me deeply, and his fate hangs heavily on me. As Wiesel says, there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time we fail to protest. In Troy Davis's case, there are a great many people in the world who have protested a great many times, and after such a long drawn out issue, where one is handed defeat time and again, the spirit languishes and there is a temptation to step back and not raise your own tiresome voice yet one more time. But by Wiesel's lights, this is exactly the time when you must lift it, and shout loudly.

Martha Silano has a thoughtful meditation on her blog about a poem by Emily Dickinson and Abu Ghraib here. It seems appropriate in this context as well.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.


The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.


Troy Davis may be innocent. He deserves a new trial in the aftermath of witness recantations. All channels of justice may now have been closed to him. But that fact in itself doesn't make him any less deserving of it.

If you would like to check out the Amnesty International position on Troy Davis, and see what you can do, please go here.

Is Anyone There?

No, I don't care all that much if there is anyone there or not--that's the title of a movie I saw this weekend. It's set in a home for the elderly, and initially portrays the strained circumstances of the family that is trying to run this place, including a very malcontented little boy named Eddie. The old people die around him from time to time and his response to this is the scientific approach--he'd like to find out what happens to them next, and he uses their death in his esoteric experiments.

Into this slightly depressing scenario careens the Amazing Clarence, a.k.a Michael Caine, almost mowing down Eddie before they ever meet. Clarence has come to the end of his days and is a very reluctant new addition to the old age home, for which, as he well knows,there is really only one exit.

Although there are some aspects of the movie which seem pretty standard and predictable, there is a lot that breaks out of the mold. But the main thing about this movie is Michael Caine as our aging, remorseful, caged magician. The portrayal he gives of the end of life is so profound that there is really no possibility of a happy ending. Yet, because we feel we have been told the truth about something, we walk out of the movie feeling readied in our spirits for the reality that lies at the end of all lives.

I won't give too much more away about the story, though I would say that even the more predictable elements contribute to the subject in a meaningful way. And I will add that if you go to this movie only for the moment where the Amazing Alexander stands in front of a mirror hopefully, skeptically, mournfully addressing the spirit of his dead wife, you will feel it was worth the price of the ticket.

Here's the story my friend told me about waiting for me after the movie ended. She was sitting outside on a bench surrounded by other viewers of the film. Everyone was silent, stunned mainly. One couple was addressed by a cheery new couple, their friends, apparently, with a chipper "Oh, what movie did you see--Adventureland?"

"No," the man of the couple said, "I just saw Michael Caine," he said, and started crying.

I could say more, but really, just go see this little movie with a big part for a great actor. It's likely to be lost in the wake of larger things, but it's well worth the price of the ticket.